"Pre July 23rd 1998, there were no pure software patents in the United States. Basically the state of affairs that you [in South Africa] have today. The patent office was routinely rejecting applications for pure software because they believed that, under the law and under current jurisprudence, that software patents were not eligible for patent protection. Then in 1998, the Federal Circuit ruled in the State Street case that software per se could be patentable, and in fact anything could be patentable. This is a case that also dealt with business method patents. So, you can see a dramatic increase - although there was a steady slope of increase in the 80s and early 90s - you can see that there was a gigantic jump, relatively speaking, when the decision was made..."[1]